


plenary indulgence

by watername



Category: SHINee
Genre: Gray-Asexuality, M/M, Mentioned Choi Minho, Mentioned Son Naeun, Minor Lee Jinki/Choi Minho, Religious Content, Succubi & Incubi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2021-01-03 11:50:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21178961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watername/pseuds/watername
Summary: It is God's will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the pagans, who do not know God."When we were introduced," he speaks, eyes locking into Jinki's. "I pictured kneeling in front of you, your cock laid on my tongue for worship."





	plenary indulgence

**Author's Note:**

> regarding gray-asexuality as a tag. it is simply the best descriptor of the spectrum jinki inhabits in this fic, as someone who experiences sexual desire very rarely.

It's a slight, passing glance of a thought that shattered the crystalline delicacy of Jinki's faith in God. 

_God would love these kids._

It was the thought on the heels of his shuffling of notes for the college group that meets every Thursday evening, 8PM, for coffee. It's often quiet, often accepting - a break from the chaotic nature of transitioning from childhood to adulthood. One of his favored benefits, it was, for becoming associate pastor for a sleepy, comfortingly constant church tucked beside satellite offices for adjuncts.

The quiet, lonely hum of his fridge full of leftovers, a cool plate in his hand ready to be warmed and prepared as his singular meal, and he had had quite a conditional thought, about an eternal, unconditional being.

The everlasting, the alpha and omega, the beginning and the end. 

_God would,_ if they could.

God doesn't love, because they don't exist. God can't love, because they are a fiction. 

As though it were a screwdriver, taken through its rotations, that closed the walls of his throat, Jinki couldn't breathe. Moments passed, and nothing changed. The thought was turned over, examined and assessed and found to have no flaws. The floor failed to open up beneath him. The sky didn't part above him.

On the contrary, everything outside of the brain, the traitorous connection of nerves that offered up that destructive thought, was unaffected.

The lamp turned on when he pushed his finger against the switch; the single mother upstairs sung her children to sleep. Her dark, throaty voice overtook their trembling, piping protests.

The journal he had kept for thirteen years, through the first groping years of faith and conviction, the tentative explorations of college, the commitment and resolution of seminary: it opened up beneath his newly agnostic fingers and reflected back thoughts that he no longer recognized.

_Looking forward to group tonight_, he lied in neat, unhesitant strokes.

* * *

When the last of the students leaves, thanking him for his time and fellowship, he barely makes it to the bathroom. His feet slip, and he lands on his knees, his body folded in agony. 

* * *

He wakes up on Saturday morning, to sunlight battered into weakness by a dark gathering of clouds. It looks like rain; he holds an umbrella in his left, and a coffee cup in his right, as he walks towards his car. An apartment full of memories of prayer, of studying, of believing, roiled his stomach all of Friday. The nothingness of two dreamless nights has left him rattled, the sense of emptiness, of waiting for the sudden void in his soul to be filled by something malignant. 

"Jinki - Jinki!" comes a high voice from across the otherwise inactive lot; its call is accompanied with a pale, feminine hand that waves him over.

"Hi Naeun," he greets the freshman.

Son Naeun has her other hand looped loosely through the arm of an unknown young man. Jinki patiently waits for her to catch her breath, for the purpose of her call; she must have run to catch him, and it would be rude to hurry her along. 

Naeun brushes the errant hairs near her lips; they're dancing to the pace of a slight wind from the north. There's a flush to her face.

"Will we be doing group next week?" she asks. Without waiting for his response, she continues on. "I heard from Jisoo that you told him you weren't feeling well, and I was - we - " she gestures to her still unnamed companion, whose dark eyes are roaming over Jinki like a searchlight - "wanted to make sure you were OK."

"I'm fine," he says with a smile. Naeun was attending college from out of town. Her hands were small; they folded neatly together, fastidious, when they prayed together for her ailing grandmother. Her nose ran as she cried.

She smiles at him now, eyes bright and thankful. Jinki turns from her to catch the young man's own eyes, moved down from his face to flicker over his throat. 

"I'm sorry, I don't think we know each other. My name is Lee Jinki, and you are...?"

The young man breaks his silence at the prompt, his voice quiet and exacting. 

"Lee Taemin."

"Ah, well, it's nice to meet you."

Taemin smiles at that, some broken quirk of amusement sharpening the curve of his lips. Naeun looks at him chidingly, bumps her shoulder against his arm, and his smile corrects, turns warm and solicitous and friendly. 

"It's nice to meet you too. I was wondering - are you leading the service on Sunday? Naeun's invited me, and she's said good things about you."

Goosebumps break out against Jinki's skin, tinged with guilt. Taemin doesn't seem to notice; his gaze is full of expectation.

"Not this week, unfortunately."

Taemin smile widens into a broken thing once more.

"I guess I'll have to keep coming until I get the pleasure." 

* * *

"Have you ever had doubts, Pastor?"

"Doubts?" Pastor Bak, whose age shows mostly in the lines around his mouth, the indent of glasses on his nose, laughs lightly, even as his eyes don't. "We wouldn't be human if we didn't have doubts, Jinki."

"I know," he murmurs. He struggles with the urge to cover his mouth with his hand, to bite into the raw, thin layer of skin. The sharpness of pain would overwhelm him. 

"Did you have doubts before you joined us here?"

"No - not in years."

He leans back. Jinki can feel the consideration in his gaze, can feel it mingling with his own self-doubt. He thinks a better man would be lifted up by the mere presence of such devotion, would find nourishment and grace in the conversation. 

"Have you considered a leave of absence?"

"What?" Jinki feels sick, the taste of two-day old vomit fresh on his tongue "No - I can't. I need to stay here, to be reminded - "

"Do you think you can force faith, Jinki?" he asks quietly. 

After a moment, he shakes his head, anticipating the line of argument. 

"Others might agree with you. They'd say - forgive me, and I believe you would say as well - that you should stay. The pursuit to re-fire the dying flames should only be made more fervent, more passionate. Not throwing everything you have into this would be little better than handing your soul over," his pastor breathes out, uncharacteristically sardonic. He suddenly seems so much older to Jinki. "I have seen many people lose their faith. For some, they return, stronger than ever in their convictions. For others, it's the beginning of the end. Which one this is for you - it's not something you or I can tell, and I want you to be able to pursue your path without feeling obligations to pretend that nothing has changed, when perhaps everything has."

"But I want to know," he murmurs. His eyes sting. 

His pastor leans over, cups his weathered, veined hands over Jinki's. 

"We all do," he says, warm and utterly cruel. "But we cannot know God's ends for each of us."

* * *

Seated at his customary location at the end of the row, Jinki struggles to turn the thin pages of his bible, his fingers sweaty and fumbling.

"We begin this morning with a passage from first Thessalonians..."

He finds it in time, his eyes catching onto the first words even as Pastor Bak begins reading them. 

_Now we ask you, brothers and sisters, to acknowledge those who work hard among you, who care for you in the Lord and who admonish you..._

Boastfulness and resentment hang hard on his neck - Jinki is who the passage is talking about, having spent nights and days poring over the original words of the Lord, the words of those who have served in his name. The careful conclusions and practices drawn up over centuries of study, he's thought over and found - had found - to be true and right. And yet, he sits, in disbelief, in a house of worship, wearing the title of a pastor. 

_Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus._

"Amen," Pastor Bak concludes. 

"Amen," Jinki murmurs with the rest of the congregation. 

Despite the conscientious reassurances of Pastor Bak, that they would only disclose publicly what Jinki had consented to beforehand, he feels hollowed out, with some rough tool scraping him raw in the doing. Their associate pastor of two years, young and bright Lee Jinki, would be taking some personal time after private counselling. 

It's careful language, meant to encourage boldly in the face of such frailty without revealing the shape and nature of the weakness - and yet that cold, analytical voice in Jinki's head, the same one that pried apart all the conditions of God's existence, told him that they would know. They would figure it out. 

Desperate to look anywhere but Pastor Bak's steady, self-composed presence, he glances back down towards his bible, eyes straying back several paragraphs to a preceding chapter. 

_It is God's will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the pagans, who do not know God. _

He almost laughs, at the clumsy pointedness of it all. As much as he knows it would dig under the skin of many experiencing doubts, Jinki doesn't count himself among them. 

For all his faults - and he's been diligent and copious at cataloging them as they recur - abstinence is not one of them. His memories of seminary - of the inevitable quiet frustration of young men and women still in the embers of youth - are primarily of the disinterested observer, if one who tried to be understanding. He had looked the other way a few times, understanding that everyone has temptation: that his roommate's quiet walk back into their apartment at 2AM, smelling of perfume, was hardly a late-night study session. 

Lust - genuine and seductive - is a sensation that only fleetingly alights on him, before winging off to more lively climes. 

Before Pastor Bak pronounces the benediction, his sermon concluded in warm encouragement, he makes the small aside he's been fearing, the quiet admission of Jinki's failures.

"Our Lee Jinki will be taking a small leave of absence. Please keep him in your prayers, as he has kept all of you in his for these past two years of leadership and devotion." 

* * *

If one more clumsy condolence, the shape of curiosity poorly masked behind it, is sent Jinki's direction, he will be sinning anew, this time in anger.

"Jinki," Naeun rushes up, Taemin a silent shadow behind her in a neat, buttoned-up shirt. "I'm sorry to hear about this."

"It's fine, Naeun," he says. His smile feels like a rictus, and he drops it before it can stain his face further. "It's something private I'm dealing with, with Pastor Bak's help. Group will go on with Mr. Park for the time being; he ran it before I got here, and he's a great teacher - "

"It won't be the same," she says, with a bite of childish petulance. She's young, still, even by her friend's standards. 

He wonders, suddenly, what Taemin thinks of her, of him, of the friendship they've developed. He wonders if the young man held the same expectations for himself and Jinki, and is now disappointed.

"I know," Jinki says. Some words of apology, some reticence - she deserves that much - are quivering into existence at the front of his mouth. 

"Things rarely every stay the same," Taemin says with utter placidity. "Except for God, of course. That's why we have to lean on them, even during difficult times. There's nothing - no one - else that can provide that."

It's hardly a new sentiment to Jinki, but there's some impassive finality to the younger man's tone that leaves him muted. He manages a nod, more out of confusion than knowing agreement, and Taemin's eyes seem to light up from within, some dark coal stoked by the barest of encouragement. 

"Of course," Jinki responds limply. 

A whisper of heat strokes his spine, and he shakes back into himself.

"Would you excuse me, please?" he says, breaking away from the pair of them. He clips his shoulder against the sharp corner of a wall as he rounds it; when he flattens his back against the surface to breathe, the pain radiates like a blooming flower. 

Laughter and good cheer flitter up and down the halls. Jinki leans his head back and remains where he is.

* * *

He can't sleep.

Instead, he's thinking of graduation from college, of saying goodbye to his religious studies classmates. 

He’s thinking of a dark-haired, doe-eyed young man, a good hands-breadth taller than him; he thinks of the the firmness of his embrace as they parted ways: his throat, dry and caught up in the moment, struggling to say the appropriate words.

Choi Minho, the last time Jinki had checked, had proceeded along with his original intentions for study, admirably meeting his goals a quarter early. The nature of his degree in social work and psychology – therapy for troubled children – found him to be content and satisfied in his career. The formerly troubled youths he sent back into the world, were roundly bolstered by his good sense, counsel, and compassionate guidance.

Jinki’s memories of him are fond, if a little distant. Their friendship had been kept from becoming more intimate by a few years apart, separate tracks, and largely different interests. They ate together occasionally when sharing a class, and occasionally joined the same extracurriculars. Long durations of time spent together were limited to studying groups, with others present; most memorably before finals, a congregation of desks pushed together outside the hallway leading to the gym.

It was at Minho's insistence, to exhaust the body and let the brain rest. He’d gather up everyone, and assign them to teams, let them run themselves ragged, Jinki included, until once again a long-winded translated essay on the East-West Schism looked appealing.

He hasn’t thought of Choi Minho in at least eight months. He hasn’t had the temptation to masturbate in a year and a half. And yet - his fingers are all the same twitching at the elastic waistband of his boxers, eager to uncover the half-hard length of his penis.

It’s an aberration brought on by his doubt, he’s sure of it. His sinful heart, the opportunity sniffing for unexpected release as eagerly as a person in a cave-in, tracking fresh air.

But it’s unlike him – his vices are hardly ever carnal –

\- and yet, agitation of his senses, a undeniable physical desire, when he remembers Minho’s laughing eyes at Jinki’s abject failures in those late nights, the sweat gleaming on his bared arms as he conceded to let him rest. 

The soft patter outside breaks into his thoughts like an unexpected but timely guest. It’s begun to rain.

Jinki closes his eyes and tries to lose himself in it; the solace of prayer he formerly found on such regular basis is now little more than a carrot, dangled in front of him, the string in full view.

* * *

His travel mug has left a dark ring around the earliest page of notes.

Jinki has always been an excellent student, and the prospect of inactivity – even a sanctioned one under Pastor Bak’s conditions – strikes coarse against his nature.

The seminary where he attended just a few years ago has changed little in that time, but it seems Jinki has changed enough for it. Even if his newfound agnosticism seems to lie beneath the surface, undetected, it strikes him as obvious in every step that brings him closer. He expects to be scolded, or eyes to soften in dismay, disappointment, from the middle-aged man who lets him into the study room.

“Do you need me to – “ he had gestured to the trash can, his half-drunk coffee still warm against his palm.

“I think we can trust you,” he smiled, and Jinki, queasy, nodded his thanks as the door closed.

As frustrating as it was, it was his notes that were now stained, and not the library’s own materials. He could still make out the characters beneath, written down an hour earlier.

_Carvaggio, 1602_

He's mouthing the foreign name in silence, his teeth pulling against his lower lip in the imitation. 

“Doubting Thomas.”

Startled by the interjection, Jinki fumbles and sends his pen dancing across the desk away from him, arcing towards the floor, and finally stopping at the feet of the intruder.

“Sorry,” Taemin says, a normal figure of the appropriate age for a college library, but even so Jinki’s heart continues to thud, even as his surprise retreats. “I didn’t mean to scare you. Well - ” he holds up a considering hand, Jinki's mouth paused open before he can respond " - a shock, or an upset would be fair. Just not fear. Hello, pastor."

He brushes a few of Jinki’s papers aside, and puts a small, well-worn book in front of him instead.

Jinki just blinks at him.

“Hi. Sorry, do you go here?”

Taemin sighs, and gestures towards the book, and Jinki picks it up, noting the weight of it, scanning for a title that isn’t printed on the cover, or the spine.

“_De civitate dei contra paganos_,” he explains. When Jinki doesn’t respond, Taemin rolls his eyes, an immature gesture that seems both at home in his youth and discordant with reality. “_The City of God_, by St. Augustine of Hippo."

“I don’t read Latin," Jinki says slowly, and in befuddlement at the intent way Taemin is examining him, as though he's looking for marks of illness.

“Is that not part of the religion anymore?” he taps the book and sits down on the desk, his legs swinging idly. “Have you ever read it, then, in non-Latin?”

"You mean Korean."

Taemin shrugs. 

"I suppose."

“Not recently.”

Taemin’s eyebrows knit together; his face, an epitome of someone upended in their plans.

“Oh. That's disappointing. But I can just explain - "

“Taemin – “ Jinki starts, his wits back in his possession. Taemin looks at him unblinkingly, expectant. “What are you doing here?”

“I go here.”

“You’re a student?”

Taemin shakes his head, and Jinki feels frustration sprouting behind his ribcage, tender thorns against his bones.

“No. I like the atmosphere," his eyes shine like sunlight through dark water. "The company. As for why I'm here, now, I was looking for you.”

The air around Jinki feels off, like sickle-sweet fruit in the moment of the first bite. Taemin smiles at him, a broken smile full of edges.

"And I found you. What do you say that I close the door?"

Without waiting for his agreement, Taemin does so, the small _click_ jolting against Jinki's nerves. His hands flutter at his sides, like birds searching for a perch.

"Better, I think," his eyes are full of appreciation as they inspect Jinki's frozen, tense form. "I've been following you."

Jinki's chair catches against the floor as he scoots back out of instinct, broken out of the strange, tense diorama the small study room has become. It's not a hard push, but it is enough to send him toppling. Taemin's hip draws along the desk as he walks towards him, the panelled lighting above flickering as his head eclipses each bulb. Jinki scrambles to his feet.

“You need to stay away from me,” Jinki says it as forcefully as he can, and in a moment the aura around Taemin deflates, the energy that had suddenly gathered around him dissipating into nothing.

“I need to?" he asks curiously, unruffled by Jinki's panic. "I could. Are you sure that's what you want?”

"Yes! Yes, you - you can't just follow people,” Jinki says in a rush. The two interactions he’s had with Taemin, fairly banal at the time, distort themselves in his memory – the young man now a sinister, dangerous figure.

Steeling up, he braces and makes a move towards the door, prepared for some altercation. He hopes to be overreacting, to be given some walkback or equivocation or explanation that restores Taemin to being just another congregant searching for guidance.

Taemin doesn’t try to stop him, moves barely enough to the side for Jinki to brush past him in the small space between him and the bookshelf filling up the other side of the room.

He refuses to look at him, out of preservation, out of disgust, but the words that come from him he can’t ignore as easily, full of predatory fascination that leaves Jinki shuddering.

“This is a first.”

* * *

“His name is Lee Taemin,” Jinki explains to the officer taking his statement. “I met him through a – a student at my church, Son Naeun – “

“Was she present?” the officer asks. Her obvious preoccupation and the rote questions rankle.

“No, she wasn't. I haven't seen her since this past Sunday."

“And have you seen Mr. Lee at your home, or anywhere unusual?”

“He was in my apartment parking lot last Saturday - but that was with Naeun, and she lives nearby and walks, so I assumed he was just with her, that - that he was a new friend, and it was a coincidence. Maybe not,” he finishes weakly, once again sick at the re-assessment. “Maybe it was his idea to find me.”

“Anything else?” she prompts, looking up and past him towards the rest of the room.

An uncharacteristic bubbling feeling, of anger roiling and splashing about in his belly, starts to encroach on Jinki, but he pushes down it as best as he can.

“He told me he was following me.”

“Yes, you mentioned that. But do you feel threatened by him?”

It's not a question he feels he can answer, not quickly or definitively. The feelings in the room, as distinct and discrete as if sensation had its own body, weren't violent, it was - else.

Heat once again strokes his spine in a gentle, lazy path, and he remembers with sudden sharpness - 

“I think he’s done this before. He said – something about no one having stopped him, yet. When I said he couldn’t follow people - when I said he couldn't follow me.”

“Hmm,” she responds. A near-savage urge explodes across Jinki's hand, and he flexes it in and out, before grinding his knuckles against the dark, stained plastic table that sits between them.

“Is there anything that you can do?” he asks instead.

“Unfortunately, not at this time. If you can get more information from Son Naeun about him, that would be a start, but if you don’t feel threatened by him, and he hasn’t violated any spaces he’s not welcome in – your home, for example – then he hasn’t done anything illegal.”

“I see.”

“I’m sorry, Pastor.”

Jinki grits his teeth against the urge to correct, and holds his hand out to shake hers.

“That makes two of us.”

* * *

As planned, his group is now run by Mr. Park. It is his first Thursday alone in over six months. His dinner lies half-eaten as he fights the urge to push aside the curtains for the fourth time since he returned home from the store.

He’s begun to see Taemin everywhere – at the store, the park, the church, when he returns a book he had borrowed some weeks earlier. It’s only ever for a moment, a head of dark hair and knowing eyes, that disappear when Jinki stops, heart held and prepared to batter in excitement.

He can't dismiss his paranoia as unreasonable. Lee Taemin has begun to haunt him.

The scratchy material of his curtains moves easily enough, and show nothing but the re-paved gravel of the lot, the twinkling of evening mist on car roofs. Jinki lets his breath go, his heart beating in uneven relief, and turns back to finish his meal. 

A polite rapping at his front door, a perfect beat of time between each point of contact. 

"I'd like you to let me in," Taemin says. The door handle begins to turn, even as Jinki rushes to it. The lock slips beneath his fingers as he touches it to reassure himself. 

Jinki's breath is coming too rapidly; he begins to hiccough, the rasping sound of it overwhelming everything besides but Taemin's next promise:

"I'll be coming in now, Pastor."

His left hand digs into his pocket for this phone, before recognizing he had left it on his counter. The door handle was still enough, and Jinki cautiously began to back away from it, still watching and waiting. 

"Thanks for the practice," Taemin says from behind him. 

When Jinki turns, the young man smiles, innocent amusement in his voice for the first time. 

"Typically people leave their doors open for me."

“How – “ Jinki's voice cracks. 

Taemin raises his eyebrows. 

“Same way I’m doing this,” he mouths, but the words come through the door. 

The same whisper of heat trails up his spine as Jinki looks at the pitch of Taemin's eyes, but it spurs him to move towards the other man in a lurch, his hands weakly fisted at his sides.

"You're stalking me," he whispers. 

"No," Taemin answers. "Metal doesn't stalk a magnet."

“What?”

“Most people by now," Taemin says, a fond expression sliding over his face. "Would be begging for me. But not you. You're as - _untended_ _to_ as ever. Just one near-miss of a night."

“Are you – what are you – “ he stutters. His mind skips to explanations, to hidden cameras, to unseen figures outside his window, to unsavory prying into his private life.

“His name was Choi Minho. You went to college together, and you both wanted to do good deeds. He was secular about it; you did yours in the name of the Lord, and look at what's happened to you now, though, Pastor," he tilts his head. "No altar for the offerings."

“I don’t know how, or why, you’re doing this,” Jinki says. “But I’m telling you to leave.”

“You are?” Taemin asks. “I haven’t heard anything like that.”

Jinki licks his lips, and Taemin’s eyes track the movement.

“Yes. Leave.”

"No," Taemin say simply. "We have to talk about a few things."

Jinki moves to push past him again, like he had in the library, but this time Taemin doesn't move obligingly to the side. Instead he stands his ground, and Jinki can feel heat radiating off of him, as though he were fever-ridden. His eyes are bright and amused, almost tidal in the strange pull Jinki feels when he looks straight at them. 

"We'll talk about me first," he says, settling into Jinki's best chair. "_The City of God_, I thought, would be a good reference for a man like you, but it misses a few things. The short version is, 'The sylvans and fauns, commonly called incubi, have often made wicked assaults upon women'."

An aborted noise dies halfway on Jinki's tongue, as soon as Taemin cocks his head at the utterance, his expression making him feel utterly small.

"It's not quite right. Fauns are something else. I like more than just women," at Jinki's incredulous expression, he continues. "I'm made for sex, Pastor. A pastime you're only occasionally interested in, despite my best efforts." 

"No," Jinki says, uncertain what point he's responding to anymore.

"Yes. You've had sex twice with another person. Masturbation hasn't even gone into double digits. It's not that there was no pleasure in it, but not enough to tempt you more, once you chose celibacy. And each of those times you've prayed for forgiveness," Taemin says. "The other night was provoked by me. It brought up some old longings, but that's the closest you've come to bad habits in a little over a year. I admit I thought you'd be much easier than this.

He looks at him consideringly before concluding. 

"A sliver of an opening in a person like you typically opens...wide."

Taking a long moment to look up and down Jinki's body, still held in shock, Taemin leans back, the slightest motion of a shrug. 

"But you're not someone who doesn't have sexual desire at all - metal, magnet, there has to be some metal - but that would be the easiest answer. There's just less than I'm used to and it's so sporadic I almost thought that was it. Instead, you lost your faith, you're adrift and _free_ for the first time, to taste and do anything you've ever denied yourself, but you aren't pursuing any of it. I can't quite decide if you're exceptionally in control or an angel trying to drive me into despair."

"I - " Jinki swallows back the instinct to lie. Taemin's eyes, already dark, have gone abyssal black and compel him to confess. "I'm struggling."

"You should believe me. There are no demons without a god."

Of all the thoughts that Jinki had entertained, of how his crisis of faith could be resolved, an avowed personal knowledge of the divinity had never come up. 

"Did you - " the thought circling around Jinki's brain, since Taemin identified himself, bristles uncomfortably against his sense of self. "Did you do this to me?"

"Did you believe in a god only as often as you wanted sex? I didn't do anything to you, Pastor. Your faith - or your loss of it - is yours only."

Jinki flushes in embarrassment, and Taemin takes it as an invitation to stand up and approach, his steps deliberate and coiled. 

"I did very little," Taemin spreads his hands apart, his fingers moving vaguely as though to demonstrate the minor nature of his intercessions. "It probably felt more uncomfortable than stimulating, since your body hasn't had as much experience with," his lips quirk up in false modesty, "let's say an above average amount of arousal. The thoughts about Minho - I drew those out from a well you've been keeping them in, and just enjoyed seeing them for myself. Tell me - could you taste the salt of him on the tip of your tongue, like you've imagined?"

"....no," Jinki says, shifting. 

"Lying out of self-preservation," Taemin smiles appreciatively. "You're not very good at it."

Flustered, less afraid, more curious and engaged than anything else, Jinki shifts from foot to foot. 

"But back to the point - I really expected to fuck you at the library earlier this week, or even before that," Taemin ignores Jinki's choking shock and continues on, supremely unbothered and blunt. "Even if my normal influence isn't going to work with you, you're a curiosity I'd like very much to indulge, Pastor. Would you like this at all? For one of your rare concessions to be with me?"

The flat honesty of Taemin is mesmerizing Jinki, far more effectively than insinuations and ethereal influences trying to wend their way into his system.

"I'm not sure."

Taemin's posture is taut, eager for resolution, and when he reaches out to modestly graze his fingers against the back of Jinki's hand, the heat of the touch is little more than the bare, chaste stroke of candlelight. 

"When we were introduced," he speaks, eyes locking into Jinki's. "I pictured kneeling in front of you, your cock laid on my tongue for worship."

Once, when Jinki was young, another young man had nuzzled against his belly, his dark eyelashes like butterflies brushing against his skin. An infrequent opportunity he did not purse, even as he could tell it would have been given gladly.

Taemin's brought up his life in such distant terms, and it feels like he's looking into his life through a glass globe. Every period of his life seems like the one before it, a set track that he found reliable and consistent and comforting, but now seems like endless re-iterations. 

Perversely, the slow examination of all the facts, that divorced sense of self, makes the decision for him. He turns his hand over and captures Taemin's in his grasp, lets the warmth flare up and burn against his skin.

A devil's grin stealing across his face, Taemin surges to bring their lips together. 

* * *

Sexual pleasure has consistently been passable. The sense of guilt that comes with furtive self-gratification aside, the climax of it is so brief, so hasty, that in the few times he's indulged, it's felt like little more than an experiment, or a waystation. The lowest tier of the deadly sins, if Jinki were to rank them. 

The feel of Taemin, mouthing at his crotch, forces him to re-evaluate.

"Let me be honest," he says, barely audible. There's roaring in Jinki's ears, and he lets Taemin maneuver him into the seat he just vacated, the weight of his body still imprinted on the fabric. "I have a certain - preference that you're very well suited for."

He hurriedly slides his hands up Jinki's legs, until they find his thighs and squeeze them appreciatively. Jinki lets his head drop back, before bringing it forward again, unable to resist the urge to look. When he does - Taemin's hands spread wide over the front of his thighs, the knuckles pulling against his skin turning them white; his eyes, dark in the moment before Taemin closes them in rapture. Jinki's dick jumps to attention, its fat tip distorting the fabric and Taemin's mouth fitting neatly around it. 

He gasps at the feel of air when Taemin unzips his pants and pulls them down, just far enough for his underwear to become visible in the moment before Taemin rids him of that as well. Whatever cold there is in the air is quickly and decidedly removed as Taemin settles his heated gaze. Jinki fights the urge to shift, to buck his hip upwards into the warmth until it finds relief in the wet willingness of his mouth. 

Taemin closes his eyes once more as Jinki can't help but tremulously imagine what it would be like to be swallowed up; the shudder visibly racks his body as though in agony. 

"You are - just delicious," he breathes. When his eyes open again, Jinki can feel the slickness of his presence, the grasping desire, the _need_, for the first time, and it's overwhelming, the pressure building underneath his very skin. Taemin looks utterly at home. 

"_Thank you_," he says, fervent and genuine, before he swallows Jinki's cock.

Waves of pleasure sweep over Jinki, cresting above his head in a sensation near to drowning. He almost drowned, once, the water's surface just beyond his fingertips as his lungs clenched tighter and tighter inside his chest. It's the closest he can come to describing what it feels like to have Taemin taking him inside his mouth, to feel the persuasiveness of his tongue lapping at every angle hungrily. His fingers dig desperately into the chair arms, and he stares, unseeing, above him. Light enters his eyes without perception, the room around him dissolving into grayness. 

In the brief moments when Taemin pulls back, he moans, gratifyingly loud and suffocating in its eroticism. 

He can feel every muscle and nerve alive at the sensation, like they've never been used before. The feeling of new skin against skin, Taemin's hand finding his, pulling it firmly until it lands at the back of Taemin's head, has Jinki sagging down even further, moving his dick until it's standing fully upright, and forcing Taemin to scoot up even closer. Jinki can no longer even see the shape of his face, just the feel of his skull beneath his hand as he moves expertly to take Jinki's dick further into the waiting openness of his throat.

Jinki is the one who chokes, and his hand closes around a chunk of Taemin's hair, fluttering between pulling him away, and pushing him further to explore. Taemin makes the decision for him, pressing forward until his nose brushes against the coarse hair. It's messy, slick and saliva and the release Taemin's already drawn out of him with his ministrations. 

The guttural vibrations of Taemin's satisfied growl, the twitching pulse of his throat, snaps Jinki into action as he edges near a crevasse and fear takes over him. He yanks backwards and pulls Taemin off of him.

The thin layer of humanity that had been stretched around Taemin, sometimes fitting better than normal, has fallen away entirely. The being standing in his room feels utterly primal and focused onto Jinki, the energy cloaked around him crackling and beckoning for more. 

"Are we done?" it asks Jinki, purring in insinuation. 

Jinki runs his shaking hand through his hair, before swallowing.

"No, but," Jinki's gaze falls to Taemin's slight hips, the stretch of skin as it stretches its arms high above, luxuriating. "I want - I would like - "

"Oh," it laughs. Its hands find their own clothing, pushing down until its body is fully bared before Jinki, beautiful and enticing. "That was my preference. Tell me what _you_ want then, Pastor."

"Not a pastor," Jinki gulps at the naked admission, at the ease with which it slips out of him, and Taemin laughs again, dark and knowing, as its hand finds Jinki's slickened, imploring cock.

"My mistake."

Taemin swings its legs on either side of Jinki's thighs, arms bracing the weight of its body. As it lowers itself, Jinki can feel his dick sliding along the curve of its unmarred skin, the slight unevenness of an entrance mere millimeters away. Jinki brings his hands up to pull Taemin down to him, to find the softness of its lips, the quickness of its tongue, opening Jinki up for more pleasure. Taemin sinks its hips down the last sliver of space between them, and his dick slides inside roughly. 

The feeling of that roughness, the reminder of the violations this is against his sense of self less than a month ago, pushes Jinki further. It makes him want to take, harder, faster, and he can feel Taemin grinning against him as he acts on the impulse, as his hands tighten against Taemin's cheek, slide down to his neck to feel the delicate beauty of them caught in his grasp. There's no past experience that drives him on, but something inside him is spurring him on, the curve of its jaw stimulating Jinki, instructing him to _take me, fuck me_ as each draw of his dick up further into Taemin seems inevitable. 

Jinki can feel himself crumbling apart with each motion. Years and months and weeks and days of devotion, of servitude, of humility, all thrown into the fire. The seconds and minutes and hours of doubt and uncertainty tossed in as well, belief and disbelief burning up into the same unrecognizable ash.

Taemin grins, delighted in Jinki's immolation. 

"That's it," it encourages him, bizarrely gentle in the way it pets at Jinki's sweat-slick hair. Brushing a strand out of his eyes, its arms wrapped around him and bringing Jinki's face to his chest; his mouth, knowing Jinki's wants before his brain can follow, opening to lick and bite at the pertness of Taemin's nipples.

It's small, hard inside his mouth, and Jinki has never been coordinated, never worked on natural clumsiness, but somehow every motion is coming together; or, perhaps, he is too swept up in sensation to care, to pay much attention to how sloppy his teeth and tongue are, to the purpling bruises he's leaving on Taemin's perfect skin, to the rough pain he must be inflicting. 

Jinki's selfishness only seems to please Taemin more; his hands have moved down from its face, to the small tightness of his chest, down to grip at the minor curve on his lap, greedily grabbing any flesh available to him as he can feel release approaching. Taemin seems to sense it, or is summoning it because patience only goes so far, after a week of wanting Jinki, to expand and extract every ounce of desire from his body, as its body clenches around Jinki's movement, the increased pressure squeezing tighter and tighter.

The impending climax is too much for Jinki; he wants to sag back, to lie there and let Taemin ride him until there's nothing left for him to give, but the incubus refuses to release. Its nails dig into Jinki's bare back, sure to scar. 

"Give it to me," it asks him, it screams and shakes the apartment, it whispers into his ear, it thrums through his bones and threads the cords of his muscles until it's as much a part of Jinki as his voice. "_Give_," and Jinki has never refused anyone anything, and comes. 

* * *

Afterwards - 

"What happens now?" Jinki asks, dazed and spent. His cock twitches as Taemin turns to look at him. The incubus looks as innocuous as he did before, but with some raw, sensitive tether between the two of them. Jinki wonders if it will go away, in time, or if he's set his life down a path he cannot correct. 

"Now?" Taemin says, quietly amused. He shrugs a shirt back on. "I go on. I may come back. This was as new for me as it was for you, and I may want another taste, if you'll have me in five years."

Jinki doesn't respond, not for a long moment, enough for Taemin to sit beside him, perched lightly on the arm of his chair. 

"What happens to me?" Jinki asks quietly to himself. "I can't go back to the church. I can't have faith that's based on...this. It wouldn't be faith."

"Because of what I said." 

When Jinki nods, Taemin slides himself down to his lap. The still-stained tip of Jinki's cock brushes against his thigh, and he shivers. Unbothered, Taemin speaks:

"Why did you believe before? Someone told you a story, and it seemed right to you. It spoke to you. It seemed right, and true. Whether that was some teacher or preacher or parent or me, it doesn't matter." 

He draws his fingers up to Jinki's cheek, faint lines in the wake of his nails against Jinki's fragile, human skin. 

"It's the same story, isn't it?"


End file.
